[Report 1899] / Medical Officer of Health, Leeds City.

  • Leeds City Council
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: [Report 1899] / Medical Officer of Health, Leeds City. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    127/182 (page 117)
    u; report as in providing for future reports means by which the analysis of defects may be more easily and more usefully made, when the figures in these tables are more numerous than those for a single year. It has been felt by your medical officer that much of the information collected, with no little labour, has been of less value than its importance warranted on account of the mixing up of different classes of house. For instance, the houses with inside water closets belong practically to a different class from those using trough closets. To compare the number of defects found on testing the one set of these houses with those in the other would be to compare things that differ greatly. Case-houses examined'*—During the sanitary year 1899 5,386 case-houses were examined on account of disease. Of these, 4,761 were visited when the patient was alive. In 625 the patient had died before we heard of the illness. The total deaths in the City from these causes numbered 1,089. With very few exceptions the houses in which these fatal cases occurred were examined either after death or during the life of the patient. These exceptions were chiefly, as in former years, where the death occurred in a public institution or where the relatives had moved. Back-to-back houses.—Of the 5,386 houses examined—some of which are as usual counted again on account of subsequent cases—1,548 were houses with a through draught ; 3,838 were back-to-backs, or houses of that type. These figures correspond to 287 and 713 per cent, respectively. In the two preceding years the numbers had been 27^2 and 72*8 It has, however, to be remembered that the present table excludes certain diseases included in those years. * ££ Case-houses ” is an expression used in previous reports to indicate that for purposes of tabulation an actual house is re-entered for each case reported in it. The convenience of the method has been explained in previous reports. The conditions which might favour the spread of, say, diphtheria, are thus counted again for every case in the house.